But Where Were You?
by 12beastboy
Summary: Fitz's ability to trust is at an all-time low after Ward's betrayal. But when the base is attacked, Fitz's shaky confidence in his new friends will be put to the test.


**A/N: Several things you should probs know before reading this. 1) I wrote this while watching season 2 - I've never seen season 3 and honestly don't know how many seasons are even out right now. So assume I know nothing beyond season 2. Because I don't. 2) This is an incomplete work and will probably remain that way, but I'm selfishly proud of this piece and posted it anyway haha.  
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Fitz let out a slow, even (not shaky not shaky) breath and stared hard at the GPA encoding chip in front of him. He knew exactly what he had to do to reprogram the chip. He knew which tools to use and how to use them. The trick was importing that information from his head to his hands. But he was trying. He was starting out small and working his way up – at least, that's what he kept telling himself. So far, he'd only been able to repair Hunter's cell phone. Which, he supposed, was a step up from what he'd been able to do two weeks ago, but compared to his engineering skills before. . . .

Before. That's what he called it. That's what everyone called it. Not out loud, of course. Not to his face. To his face, they were oh-so-careful around the delicate, fractured carving of glass that he'd become in their eyes. Oh-so-gentle to the broken boy with the broken mind who used to be _so much_ before. _Before_. Before Ward pushed him and Simmons out of the Bus. Before they sank to the bottom of the ocean. Before he ran out of air and before he became a shell of the lab technician he'd been.

But that was Before. This was Now. And Now always required his full, complete attention, whether he was scanning the structure of a complicated piece of Hydra machinery or trying to string a simple sentence together. He gripped the screwdriver tighter in his hand and lowered it closer to the chip. All he had to do was insert the screwdriver into the correct position and then twist it to the left. One step at a time.

He was going to do this right. The screwdriver slid into place. He was going to do this right. He was going to do this right he was going to do this right he was –

A spasm coursed through his hand, sending the screwdriver skittering across the surface of the chip. "No!" he howled and heaved the tool across the room, where it hit the wall with a dull _thump_ and landed on the floor with a loud clatter.

He _couldn't_ do this right. He would never be able to do anything right, because this was Now and that was Before.

Before he lost everything.

"Fitz?"

Startled, Fitz jerked his head toward the doorway to the lab, but he visibly relaxed when he saw who was standing there. "Hey, Mack."

The big man crossed his arms in front of his chest. "You having problems?"

Mack was perhaps the only person Fitz felt comfortable around Now. He seemed to be the only person who didn't pity Fitz. He didn't try to act careful around the engineer – he treated Fitz like an actual, normal person. Which he wasn't, and Fitz was fully aware of that, but it was nice to pretend. Mack always seemed to know what the younger man was thinking. He _got_ it. Mack was the friend Fitz thought he'd never have after Jemma left.

Fitz shook his head, but Mack's pointed glance at the screwdriver on the ground stilled him. "I was just trying – I want to get better, and I was working on the, the . . ." he waved his hands at the chip, as if gesturing toward the object would somehow allow him to name it.

Mack slowly shook his head as he bent down to pick up the tool. "Okay, but how about next time you don't throw anything, all right?"

Fitz mumbled a reply and tried not to flinch when Mack stepped forward in order to hand him the screwdriver. The man completely towered over Fitz, which instinctively made him shrink further in on himself every time the big agent came close. Mack would never hurt him, never in a million years, but Ward had been tall, too, and _he_ never would have hurt Fitz in a million years, except for when he _did_ , and that betrayal had hurt more than anything.

Ward was the reason there was a Now and a Before.

Mack must have seen something in his eyes, because he laid the screwdriver down on the table and held his hands out in front of him in a placating gesture. "Whoa, kid," he said, his face morphed into an expression Fitz couldn't put his finger on. It wasn't pity. It wasn't happiness. It was . . . it was something else. If only he had _words_ again. But words were Before.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Mack continued.

"Kind!" Fitz blurted out. _That_ was what it was.

Mack raised an eyebrow, but shrugged his shoulders and lowered his hands. "I don't get called _that_ too often, but I suppose I'll take it." Then he narrowed his eyes at Fitz, which made the younger man squirm uncomfortably. Fitz switched his gaze to something else – anything else – in the brightly lit lab, not wanting to face the older agent's scrutinizing eyes. While it was great having a friend who knew what was going on in his head, it also meant he couldn't really keep anything to himself anymore.

"When's the last time you slept?" Mack asked.

Fitz winced. Mack had hit the nail on the head – like he always did. "I don't remember," he replied honestly. He tried to think. "Tuesday?"

Mack frowned, but not in a scary way. Not in a disappointed way, the way Fitz's father would look at him before he started drinking. Before he left. That was a different Before, but that Before hadn't always been good. "Fitz," Mack said, snapping him back to Now. "It's Friday."

"Is it?" Fitz said distractedly, grabbing the screwdriver as he riveted his attention back onto the GPA chip. He could do this. He would _make_ himself do this.

A large hand gently gripped his thin wrist, halting his movement. "You need to rest," Mack said.

At those words, Fitz sagged. He hadn't noticed it a couple minutes ago, or maybe he'd just refused to notice, but now he realized how weary he was. It'd been a long week. "Yeah, you're right," he muttered.

Then the lights abruptly turned off, encasing the two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in total darkness.

"Crap," Mack said, his gun already in his hands when the red emergency lights switched on. He headed toward the phone in the corner of the lab as he called over his shoulder to Fitz, "I'm gonna check in with everyone, see what's going on."

Fitz nodded, but his mind was elsewhere. If there had been a power shortage, the lights would have at least flickered. There would have been a loud noise. The lights plunging out like this would only happen if. . . .

Fitz shook his head roughly. "No, you're just being paranoid," he whispered to himself.

"What was that?" Mack asked as he picked up the phone. The question was forgotten, however, when he frowned. The faint red light cast the burly man's face in shadow, leaving dark, cavernous holes where his eyes should have been.

 _This_ frown was scary.

"The lines are dead," Mack said curtly, hanging the phone back up.

 _Sometimes, paranoia is necessary_ , some part of Fitz's subconscious thought smugly.

"Fitz," Mack said, pointing at him. "You stay here. I'm gonna have a look around." He pointed again. "Don't. Move." And then he ducked out through the doorway, his gun at the ready.

The lab was silent with Mack gone. Fitz wasn't used to silence. Before, Jemma had always been with him, arguing about how the thermodynamics of something-or-other would interfere with the function of whatever piece of technology he was currently engineering. After, but not Now, he'd still had Jemma to fill the silence. Only she hadn't been real. But Now, Now he was making friends (real ones), and fake Jemma had disappeared alongside her real counterpart.

Now there was silence.

A rustling noise in the hallway caught his attention. He clenched the only weapon he had (a screwdriver) tighter in his hand, feeling his heart rate climb rapidly. "Who – who's there?" he squeaked out. Never had he wished more for a manlier voice.

After several long minutes of quiet, he felt himself relax. It was the paranoia again. "Of course," he muttered, turning to face the counter behind him, "Last time, it wasn't just in your head."

Then a hand clamped over his mouth, and Fitz could only think, _I_ knew _it_. Without hesitation, he drove the screwdriver backward and tried not to feel sorry for whoever it was when the pointy end jabbed something soft. A quiet curse sounded as the hold on Fitz loosened. He used this advantage to duck away from his attacker and scramble toward the door. "Mack!" he shouted. "Mack!"

Something gripped his arm and spun him around. He had a split second to take in the sight of Mack standing there before the agent punched him in the face. Fitz fell onto his backside, hardly aware of the thick liquid sliding past his lips and the biting pain in his surely broken nose because _Mack was Hydra._

The logical part of his mind instantly reprimanded him. _You don't_ know _that,_ it reminded him. _You don't know if he's Hydra. You don't have enough information to be jumping to conclusions like that._

But when Fitz looked up and saw only cold, emotionless orbs staring back at him, his breathing hitched and his vision spiraled. The last time he'd seen that look on someone's face, he'd been pushed out of an airplane. He'd been sent to die.

And, in a way, he had.

Mack fisted a huge hand in the collar of Fitz's sweater and hauled the engineer to his feet, which only made him even more painfully aware of the height difference between them.

"Mack," Fitz pleaded, feeling wetness beginning to pool at the back of his eyes. "Mack, please, don't –"

A hard fist to his stomach sent the air rushing from his lungs in a groan, cutting off the rest of his words. _Stupid, stupid_ , he berated himself as Mack yanked the forgotten screwdriver out of his hands. _Begging hadn't worked Before, so why would it work Now?_

The bigger man pinned Fitz against one of the lab tables and yanked his hands behind his back. The engineer heard Mack rummage through nearby drawers, as though looking for something, and Fitz knew that he should probably use this chance to shout for help, or at least put up some sort of struggle. He doubted he would get a better opportunity than this.

But he couldn't quite bring himself to care. What was the point? What was the point of escaping if the people he escaped to continued turning against him?

"Now, aren't you being a bit melodramatic?"

Fitz nearly groaned out loud. _Not now, please, not now._

Jemma (fake Jemma, not-here Jemma, not- _real_ Jemma) disregarded his silent pleas and continued. "Really, Fitz, you've always had a tendency to be a bit of a drama queen."

So now even his own subconscious had nothing but insults to throw at him.

Fantastic.

"No, just _listen_ to me!" She was standing directly in front of him now, her hands flailing as they only did when she was angry. When she was really mad, her eyes would get shiny, as if she were about to burst into tears rather than yell at him, and that always _always_ made him feel more guilty than anything. "You can't give up this easily! You still have things to fight for!" She took a step forward, the anger gone, her hands resting on his arm. "You still have me."

"But that's just it, Jemma," Fitz spat suddenly, raw, bottled emotions converging and blanketing his reasoning. "I _don't_."

Then she was gone (again) and he realized that sometime during his impromptu hallucination Mack had bound his hands behind his back with duct tape. "Shut up!" Mack hissed at him, simultaneously clapping one large hand over his mouth and prodding his side with what Fitz could only assume was a pistol. And probably not a Night-Night one.


End file.
